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Study: Powerful think they’re taller than they are
USA Today: Powerful people truly do stand tall, at least in their own minds. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Cornell University found through a series of three experiments that powerful people feel taller than they really are. Results are published in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science. Read the whole story: USA Today
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Le pouvoir leur a monté à la taille!
Slate France: L’histoire ne manque pas d’exemples de personnages de petite taille (au sens propre) ayant exercé de grands pouvoirs. Lénine mesurait 1m65 comme Charlot, Louis XIV 1m62 (*) comme Beethoven, Mozart et Benoit XVI, Voltaire 1m60, Balzac 1m57, Jean-Paul Sartre 1m52, Jeanne d’Arc 1m50, Edith Piaf 1m42… Ces tailles, listées sur des sites comme Astrotheme, sont très souvent contestées. C’est le cas de celle de Nicolas Sarkozy. Donnée à 1m62 sur certains sites, elle est estimée à 1m68 par Astrotheme et à 1m65 dans un article du magazine Science du 12 janvier 2012 qui fait référence à une étude parue par la revue Psychological Science. Métaphore du pouvoir Michelle M.
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Made with love actually tastes better: study
New Zealand Herald: Convinced nothing can beat your mum's Sunday roast or grandmother's apple pie? You're probably right. Food that we believe has been prepared with tender loving care always tastes better, according to scientists. So if your friends and family constantly impress you with their culinary delights, it probably says as much about your relationship with them as it does about their prowess in the kitchen. Researchers looking into human experience found that our experience of a physical sensation, such as taste, is affected by how we perceive the person administering it.
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Sat-navs leave us in dark
Daily Express: We instinctively remember maps and end up with a north-facing “compass” in our heads. But over-reliance on GPS devices could erase the maps from our brains, scientists say. They ran virtual-reality tests on 26 residents of a town all had lived in for at least two years. Subjects were made “sightless” by artificial fog – and when facing north they could point to where locations would be in real life. Scientists Julia Frankenstein and Tobias Meilinge say the subjects did so well because they had all “seen, and internalised”, a map of their town, Tubingen in Germany. But the researchers warn that relying too much on GPS devices will eventually wipe out our memorised maps.
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Primed by expectations – why a classic psychology experiment isn’t what it seemed
Discover Magazine: In the early 20th century, the world was captivated by a mathematical horse called Clever Hans. He could apparently perform basic arithmetic, keep track of a calendar and tell the time. When his owner, Wilhelm von Osten, asked him a question, Hans would answer by tapping out the correct number with his hoof. Eventually, it was the psychologist Oskar Pfungst who debunked Hans’ extraordinary abilities. He showed that the horse was actually responding to the expectations of its human interrogators, reading subtle aspects of their posture and expressions to work out when it had tapped enough. The legend of Hans’ intellect was consigned to history.
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Is gossip bad for you? New study finds health benefits
CBS News: Do you gossip? Even if the answer is yes, you're not likely to admit it. Gossip is generally frowned upon for its potential to spread harmful rumors or labeled as idle chatter. But a new study suggests gossip might be good for your social and psychological health. "Gossip gets a bad rap, but we're finding evidence that it plays a critical role in the maintenance of social order," said UC Berkeley social psychologist Robb Willer, coauthor of the study published in this month's online issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
